The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Oil and Gas and member of the Board of Directors of the National Oil Corporation, Khalifa Al-Sadiq, explained that the agreement is legal and all that happened is an amendment to the agreement that was signed in 2008 to improve and encourage the strategic partner, Eni, to invest in these important fields. After Eni’s request to amend the agreement to recover the maximum costs, the Corporation formed a team of experts and submitted a proposal after conducting the economic feasibility required to manage the Council of the NOC. “We have studied the options presented by the committee and made a recommendation to the Supreme Council of Energy representing the relevant authorities. The amendment was approved and referred to the Council of Ministers as the decision-maker, and the vote was unanimous by Cabinet after submitting the offer.”
Al-Sadiq pointed out that 62% of Libya’s gas production, which is the basis for generating electric power, comes from Area D and the Mellitah complex, and 1.7 billion cubic meters are produced from Area D, and this production is in great danger, and by the year 2025 production will warn to about half of what is produced today, and that the solutions that the National Oil Corporation sees are the development of fields “A and E”, and if the development is not completed by the year 2027, the country will enter into complete darkness.
He continued: “Equipping the platforms and drilling wells takes 3 to 4 years, and that power generation plants today need 960 million cubic meters, so this is a matter of development related to national security, and for this, the institution took this decision because we are in a struggle with time.”
